Well, mostly I was in bed fighting off an horrific viral infection. Then it was the Brits (Adele won a few, you may have heard) and now I finally have some time to write my poor old neglected blog.
To make up for lost time, here's a mega "songs you may have missed" post, with six word synopses for every song. Buckle up and get ready.
Back in December 2012, Kathleen Anne Brien gave us a glimpse into the recording of her second album with her pitch-black Danger EP. Ultimately, her Little Red album had a more pop focus - but it was fascinating to hear the gravitational pull of clubland on her writing.
Skip forward to 2015, and history is repeating itself. Katy B has taken a break from recording her third record, Honey, to release a one-off single called Calm Down, recorded with Four Tet and Floating Points. Sadly, the Michael Winner sample couldn't be cleared.
It's a deep cut, in both senses of the phrase - with Katy floating over an unremitting electro pulse as she eulogises a night on the tiles (ie visiting a discotheque, not lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of your own vomit - although one invariably leads to the other, I suppose).
"When are we ever going to calm down?" she cries. "Know I should do, but I love the sound / All I really wanna do is dance."
A press release says this:
"In collaboration with Four Tet and Floating Points, Katy B reveals Calm Down, the first piece of music taken from her new project entitled ‘Honey’ that will see Katy teaming up with a number of producers and artists, further exemplifying Katy’s ability to push boundaries and create exciting new music. Expect more details of Honey to follow in the new year."
A semi-regular round-up of songs I wanted to blog about until life got in the way.
This week's superstars include.
1) Tinashe - Player (ft Chris Brown)
Her early EPs were a major influence on the dark, brooding lasciviousness of Beyonce's Beyonce album. Now Tinashe is going for Queen B's crown with a straight-up, chrome-plated pop classic.
The first single from her forthcoming second album, Joyride, it suggests a major push for mainstream success. But one thing is niggling at me: The lyric websites all say she's singing "you got me all fucked up" in the chorus - but surely I'm not the only one who hears "you got me up the duff"?
2) Ellie Goulding - Something In The Way You Move
Simmering electropop from pop's huskiest songstress. Another indication that Delirious will be an album full of solid gold bangers.
3) Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson - Say Say Say (2015 remix)
A souped-up version of the 1983 duet, this swaps around Macca and Jacko's vocals, and is generally a funkier, more upbeat take on the original. Part of a reissue of McCartney's Pipes of Peace album, it has even been blessed with a new video.
Sadly, the single's b-side, Ode to a Koala Bear, has been left untouched.
4) KDA - Turn The Music Louder (ft Tinie Tempah & Katy B)
The backing track feels a little "my first sequencer" but Tinie and Katy lift this track way above the average. Fantastic video, too.
5) Eliza and the Bear - Lion's Heart
A spoonful of Mumford, a sprinkle of Coldplay, and a pinch of The Libertines. Mix it all together, throw in a trumpet and you have Eliza and the Bear's anthemic new single.
Just to reiterate every article that's ever been written about them: Eliza and the Bear are all boys, and none of them is called Eliza.
6) Foxes - Better Love
Windswept, widescreen pop. But even Rihanna would think twice about a music video where the star sits on a toilet (even if she's just painting her toenails).
7) Dua Lipa - New Love
Jessie Ware's silky melodies crossed with the percussive dissonance of Bjork - New Love is an epic introduction to 19-year-old Londoner Dua Lipa. It was produced by Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs), and Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow), in case that sort of thing matters to you.
8) Frances - Let It Out
Quiet, intense, fragile, beautiful. Frances is a shoo-in for next year's "ones to watch" lists.
9) Jones - Indulge
I missed this song when it came out in April, but it's become a firm favourite after London-born R&B singer Jones performed it on Jools Holland earlier this week. A dramatic, luxurious song about surrendering to love - I present both acoustic and studio versions, because I can't decide which I love most.
10) Bloc Party - The Love Within
Back from their second "hiatus" with a renewed energy, this song is a perfect balance between the shouty whirligig of Bloc Party's indie thrash and the throbbing electronica of Kele Okereke's solo material.
Petite Miller - Barbaric
This lolita-ish French singer is being talked about in all the right places - but I'm just not getting it. Can anyone enlighten me?
11) Olly Murs - Kiss Me
An interesting diversion into "not hateful" territory from pop's perennial hat-botherer and X Factor acolyte.
12) Janet Jackson - BurnItUp! (Ft Missy Elliot)
A lyric video, shot by the cast and crew of Janet's Unbreakable World Tour, this makes life on the road look like an absolute blast.
2014 wasn't a great year for albums, truth be told. Or maybe I bought the wrong ones. Anyway, here are the 10 best CDs that found their way onto my iTunes library, sorted by the number of times they were played (with my trademarked Excel formula to weight the albums by release date).
10) The Black Keys - Turn Blue
Neither as sleazy nor as catchy as 2011's El Camino, Turn Blue saw The Black Keys take a long, dark road-trip of the soul after Dan Auerbach's very messy, very public divorce. Along the way, they delved into psychedelia, 60s beat music, 70s disco funk and - on the pleasingly daft closing track - solid gold drivetime pop hooks.
Oh, but this album is so gloriously, deliciously IN PAIN. Banks uses music like primal scream therapy, howling her distress over an array of sawbuzz synths.
As an album, Goddess is as dark and foreboding as a graveyard, but her melodies beguile and her honesty disarms: When she disses a boyfriend by reminding him she's "the girl who made you soup," it's so awkwardly specific it can only be drawn from real life.
Then, just when you think she's getting too miserable, she pulls out a filthy sexballad like Warm Water. This is what a femme fatale with a broken heart sounds like.
After achieving commercial success with the glossy soft rock of 2011's You & I, The Pierces smudged their mascara, consulted a shaman and revisited the backwood gothicism of their earlier records. The result is an album that retains You & I's soaring choruses while sending shivers down your spine.
Allison and Catherine's sisterly harmonies are worthy of Agnetha and Frida - but can you imagine Abba ever singing a lyric as sinister as: "Held down by the devil's hand / Dressed up like a gentleman"?
Not out in the UK until this month because Tove's UK label hate us, but available on import since September. SEPTEMBER.
It's worth the wait, though. Tove Lo plays pop like her life hangs in the balance. "I've always wanted my music to have that desperation," she told me last April, "where you just want to strip your clothes off and run down the highway".
I haven't quite gone that far, but it's been close. Timebomb, Not on Drugs and Moments ("on my good days I am charming as fuck") have hooks so thunderously bombastic I have literally started air drumming on the bus. There is no higher praise.
Dance music doesn't produce solo artists of longevity or substance, but Katy's astute combination of underground sonics and pop structures made the "difficult second album" seem effortless. Best of all, she knew it. The opening track painted her as Queen B, easing a newcomer into the rituals of the night: "Keep your jacket on my friend, don't sit down / There's so many things to do round here, let me show you around".
But while her debut was so in thrall to clubland it should have come with a complimentary strobe light, Little Red offered a few glimpses of what happened off the dancefloor: Katy nervously waiting for a date to arrive on All My Lovin'; or succumbing to guilt on the magnificent Crying For No Reason.
The result is a rare thing: A club record that sounds just as good at home.
Ed Sheeran spends most of x singing about getting his leg over but, incredibly, you never recoil in horror or throw up in your mouth. Not even once.
Maybe it's his sincerity, maybe his humility, maybe it's just that these are bloody great pop songs. Gossipy, confessional and instantly memorable, the upbeat ones bounce and the weepy ones are suitably blubsome.
Occasionally he turns out a lyrical clunker ("put your faith in my stomach" is the year's least romantic come-on) but even those makes him more relatable. No wonder x became the biggest album of the year.
First of all, Bad Blood is the most horribly misjudged song of the year. A diss track, supposedly about Katy Perry, it's pathetically petulant and paints a particularly unflattering portrait of its author. It has been excised from my library, otherwise this album would be languishing at number 10.
Secondly, why all the shouting? Almost every chorus is emphasised by T-Swift screaming the hook: "We never go OUT OF STYLE"; "Are we in the clear yet, IN THE CLEAR YET? GOOD." All you had to do was STAY (STAY) STAY (STAY)". It's almost as if she's worried the songs won't stand on their own merits.
But, of course, they stand 50 feet tall. The lyrics are funny and knowing, the production is enthusiastically bright, the hooks are harder to dislodge than a tapeworm.
1989 sounds nothing like the year it was named after, but Taylor Swift defined pop music in 2014.
2) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part One - Various Artists
Asked to contribute to the last Hunger Games soundtrack, Lorde handed in a diverting cover of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants To Rule The World. For Mockingjay, Part 1, she was given complete creative control of the whole album.
The result is surprisingly cohesive, the nailbiting intensity of the film mirrored perfectly in the grungy, brooding music. Meltdown - by Lorde and Pusha-T and Haim and Q-Tip (!) - is a gothic call to arms; Chvrches' Dead Air chillingly depicts a disappeared population; Tove Lo's Scream My Name reflects the heroine's steely torment: "I'm dirt, I'm ice... I can take bullets to the heart".
The quality and the tension rarely dip - although Jennifer Lawrence's spellbinding The Hanging Tree should really have been on the track list.
Jessie Ware's second album is pinch yourself dreamy. A slow-burner, but one that goes from tugging at your heartstrings to snapping them in two.
Listen to the restraint with which Ware sings, "Say you love me to my face / I need it more than your embrace", then imagine how it would have sounded if pop music's other Jessie had wrapped her acrobatic tonsils around it. Horrible, that's how.
In fact, Ware's instincts are flawless throughout. She references Sade, Prince and The xx, and is never afraid to make unexpected choices. She favours subtle, unfolding grooves over obvious pop arrangements. And every song is structured around the ebb and flow of those flawless vocals. Or, to use her own words, "I thought it would be great to show people what it's like when I attempt to sing like a dolphin."
It's not the most exciting or original, album on this list. But it's by far and away the best.
And that's another year wrapped up, except for the honourable mentions: Paolo Nutini - Caustic Love; St Vincent - St Vincent; Royal Blood - Royal Blood; George Ezra - Wanted On Voyage; Prince - selected tracks from Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum; Lana Del Rey - Ultraviolence; Lykke Li - I Never Learn. I heard U2 had an album out, as well, but for some reason I couldn't find a copy in the shops...
When I sat down and totted up my iTunes play counts for this year's Top 10, I had to double check my numbers. I had fully expected Clean Bandit's Rather Be and Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud to be among my most-listened-to songs of 2014 and, while both came close, the data doesn't lie.
So, the following singles are the ones I've compulsively added to iTunes playlists over the last 12 months and they represent the soundtrack to my year, free of self-censorship, editorialising and Sam Smith.
10) Charli XCX - Boom Clap
It's safe to say Charli XCX had low expectations for Boom Clap. She sent it to Hilary Duff. She bunged it onto a film soundtrack. She wrote the lyric "the beat goes on and on and on" and couldn't be arsed to change it.
But the track sparkles - partly because, for once, Charli isn't trying so hard to come across as a teen rebel. From the masterfully concise intro to the honey-drop "la la las" in the final chorus, it's a great big hug of a song.
Oh, and the lyric "you're the glitter and the darkness in my world" couldn't be a better fit for The Fault In Our Stars and its skewered tale of young love.
9) SBTRKT ft Ezra Koenig - New Dorp, New York
The best-sounding single of the year, throbbing with mystery and possibility - even though it's just a bass drum, an elemental bassline and a few sound effects.
Ezra Koenig delivers a dream-state vocal, listing the sights of Staten Island and "flag slappin' Manhattan", although what he's actually on about is anyone's guess.
It's just a shame the rest of SBTRKT's album didn't live up to this promise.
8) Katy B - Crying For No Reason
AKA Katy B's secret weapon. A Guy Chambers co-write, Crying For No Reason is a "proper" ballad about the damage caused by buried emotions, with a hat-tip to Madonna's Frozen in its clattering drum fills.
Katy's delivery makes the song indispensable. "I never faced all the pain I caused," she sings with tangible anguish. "Now that pain is hitting me full force".
7) Prince - Breakdown
Twelve months ago, I would never have expected a Prince single to feature in this Top 10. But here he is, reinvigorated by those hit-and-run London concerts, delivering his most devastating ballad since The Beautiful Ones.
Apparently an autobiographical account of his former excesses - "I used to throw the party every New Year's Eve / First one intoxicated, last one to leave" - it's also a love letter to the person (higher power?) who set him free.
If Frank Ocean had released this, it would have been everywhere. But Frank Ocean could never have hit those high notes in the coda.
6) Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk
Speaking of Prince, here's a tribute act.
5) Lorde - Yellow Flicker Beat
By Lorde's standards, Yellow Flicker Beat is a minor single but there's something about her performance that draws me in. Maybe it's the killer hook, maybe I'm hypnotised by the frail hum that runs through the entire song - either way, it's murderously addictive.
As with Boom Clap, Lorde's song is a perfect marriage between lyric and source material (in this case, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay). If you can't imagine Katniss Everdeen singing "I made a little prison and I'm locking up everyone who ever laid a finger on me," then you're doing it wrong.
4) The Staves - Blood I Bled
The Staves really raise their game on this Bon Iver-produced song, the immaculate layering of their harmonies matched by the steady build of instrumentation from a single, hand-picked guitar to the soaring, astral strings of the closing moments.
Truly exceptional.
3) Jessie Ware - Tough Love
"Sophisticated" and "tasteful" are dirty words in pop but Jessie Ware proves they don't have to be. Tough Love has a surface layer of calm, but listen closer and you'll hear the strain in Jessie's voice as she confronts a no-good lover - "so you want to be a man about it, do you?" We never find out exactly what he's done, but the cheeky lift from Prince's Little Red Corvette suggests it's not just his eye that's been wandering.
Repressed anger has never sounded so beautiful.
2) Tove Lo - Truth Serum EP
Rarely does a pop act arrive as fully-formed as Tove Lo, whose dispatches from the front line of love are catastrophically honest.
The Truth Serum EP is an X-rated Mills and Boon potboiler, chronicling a relationship from the first heady rush of love to a devastated, drug-fuelled break-up.
Every track hits you like a hurricane - the pop hooks deployed like rock riffs as Tove excavates her darkest secrets. No wonder her mother was worried about her when she heard it.
1) Taylor Swift - Shake It Off
Let's face it, Shake It Off was more calculated than Fermat's Last Theorem. Co-written with not one, but two of Sweden's biggest hitmakers, it was stuffed with heard-it-before hooks, yawnsome self-empowerment clichés ("haters gonna hate") and employed the phrase "this sick beat" without any apparent irony.
But if Taylor's ambition was to write a stone-cold pop classic, she hit the nail on the head. Squarely. With a fucking jackhammer.
The melody is indelible, and the urge to dance like a dork is irresistible, thanks to that infectious drumbeat. Oh, sick beat. I get it now.
PS: The song would still be better if she sang "bakers gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake". And that's a fact.
And, because it's been a great year for singles, the next 11 would have been:
Most people assume Katy B's excellent, progressive second album Little is so-called because she is petite and a ginger. They're partly right - although that hair colour is definitely from a bottle - but there's another reason, too.
Speaking to the Metro last year, the singer mentioned her album was named after a song called Little Red Light, about a cheating boyfriend, whose Blackberry gave him away. The blinking red "message received" light was flashing a little too frequently and when Katy checked it out... Well, you can guest the rest.
For some reason, the song never made it onto the final tracklisting but Katy has just given it away as a free download, ahead of her appearance at the Notting Hill Carnival this weekend.
Spiced with a dancehall/reggae flavour, you can see why it wasn't a good fit for sophisticated dance-pop of Little Red: The album, but on its own it's still a proper little gem.
Egads! Someone has locked Katy B in a padded cell, forced her to clutch a potato in each hand and turned it to a music video. The lengths record companies will go to...
Not really, of course. The big white room is just a handy metaphor for Katy's mental anguish in her new single, Still (it's a ballad). The setting also makes her shocking red barnet the only splash of colour in an otherwise monochrome video. It's like Schindler's List, but without the Nazi death camps.
Hello... and also goodbye. We're heading off for a bit of summer sun, so unfortunately the blog will be out of action for a fortnight. (It's a one man show, and that man is quite tired). However, I have a bountiful spread of pop goodies to sustain you over the next 14 days. Try not to gorge yourself on them all at once.
1) Katy B - Crying For No Reason (live on Graham Norton)
People always get a little anxious when a record is pushed back but - hooray! - Katy B's Little Red is a triumph. (One song in particular, All My Lovin', sounds like it could have come from Neneh Cherry's Raw Like Sushi. It's that good.)
The album arrives on 10th February, so until then, here's a live performance of the current single Crying For No Reason. As Popjustice has already noted, "it's the best chatshow-based single performance in years". Katy doesn't move around much, but her vocals are mesmerising.
And when a song is this good, that's all you need.
2) NONONO - Hungry Eyes
Nonono, the Swedish band who aren't named after a Dawn Penn song, have released Hungry Eyes, a single that isn't named after the Dirty Dancing song. Ah well.
3) Lorde - Team (Panic City Remix)
I didn't think it'd be possible to dance to a Lorde single, unless you count that creepy Poltergeist thing she does on every TV performance. But San Franciscan DJ/Producer Panic City has taken Team's minimal, spidery beat, shot it with a tazer and dragged it onto the dancefloor.
You won't be able to resist (but if you can, could you keep an eye on my coat?)
4) Little Mix - Word Up!
I wrote about this last week when the audio wasn't available. Now the audio is available. Here is the audio.
5) Ibibio Sound Machine - Let's Dance
Mary Anne Hobbs played this on her peerless 6 Music show this weekend (there is literally no better way to wake up on a Saturday morning) and it gave me a greater jolt awake than the hot jug of coffee I was pouring down my throat.
Ibibio Sound Machine are an eight-piece London collective, fronted by British-Nigerian vocalist Eno Williams, who combine elements of West African highlife, disco, post-punk and psychedelic electro soul. This sprawling, funky single is their debut after signing to Soundway Records at the tail end of 2013. It sounds like The Tom Tom Club got swallowed by Botswana, and it is incredible.
6) Jhené Aiko - Bed Peace
2014 is shaping up to be the year R&B came back from the grave, with Solange, Banks, SOHN, Kwabs and Sampha among the artists hailed as saviours of the genre. Now you can add Jhené Aiko to that list, too.
Jhené's USP is her girlish falsetto - all playful and sensual compared to her contemporaries, who wither sound bored, depressed or stoned.
Her Sail Away EP came out last year, but is starting to get some mainstream pick-up (mostly on 1Xtra). The lead track is the woozy, sexy Bed Peace, which features Childish Gambino on co-lead vocals. The video sees them recreate John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "bed-in" protest against the Vietnam War because... oh, I don't know. You work it out.
7) iamamiwhoami - Fountain
I haven't really bought in to the whole iamamiwhoami "thing". The project, created by Swedish singer Jonna Lee, has consistently sent dozens of blogs spiralling into a frothing whirl of delight, mainly because Jonna wouldn't tell them who she was and everyone convinced themselves it was Christina Aguilera for some reason.
Anyway, now that we know it's not Christina Aguilera, the music suddenly seems more focused and tuneful. Fountain is a beautiful, icy pop ballad with a particularly arresting (ie pretentious) video.
8) Prince - U Got The Look
With his tiny royal purpleness making an impromptu visit to Britain on 3rd February, I will be spending my entire holiday listening to Purple Rain and Sign O The Times and Batman (yes, even Batman) and wishing I was back at home.
If you haven't seen him before, sell your kidneys on the black market to get a ticket. Because even when he doesn't play the hits, Prince is still the best performer alive today.
With the set-list changing every night, I really hope he hauls this one out of the vault. U Got The Look is one of the best-constructed pop duets of all time. Try and deny it.
Right, that's it... The out-of-office is on, and the sunglasses are packed.
If you see anything that should go into a "Songs I have missed" round-up when I get back, put the link in the comments, or send me a tweet @mrdiscopop. I'll put the best ones up here on 10th Feb.
Like the rest of us, Planet Pop has taken most of the last two weeks off, so there isn't much to catch up on. But the few videos that did trickle onto the internet all herald VERY EXCITING THINGS for 2014. Here they are, in all their multifaceted glory.
FACT: It's been four years in the making. FOUR YEARS! "You have to go through a lot of hardship before you get what you want," she noted presciently on these very pages back in 2010.
FACT: This song, a cover of Ariel Pink's My Molly, isn't on it. But it should be.
FACT: SBTRKT played this at the end of his set at a New Years' Eve party in Mexico.
FACT: It only lasts a minute which, after all the self-indulgent eighteen-minute "jams" of 2014 (I'm looking at you, Justin Timberlake), would be a welcome new trend for 2014.
5) Boots - Haunted FACT: Boots is the mysterious writer/producer who cropped up on the credits to Beyonce's album, contributing to 8 of the 14 tracks.
FACT: He signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label last June.
FACT: The reference tracks for Beyoncé's album used to appear on his Soundcloud (including his guide vocals).
FACT: All that's there now is this gorgeous, minor key ballad. I wonder if he'll keep it for himself?
OK, not really, But, at 112 bpm, this is as downtempo as a Katy B record us ever likely to get.
Sumptuous and powerful, Crying For No Reason it features Katy's best vocal to date - and lyrics to match ("I never faced all the pain I caused, now the pain is hitting me full force").
"This album is more focused on love and relationships and reality," she told Fact magazine earlier this year. "Sometimes you don't realise you have to fight for your happiness."
According to the press release, Crying For No Reason "presents another facet of the rich musical palette on display on the forthcoming album" Red. So there.
But the single isn't out 'til 27th January. What on earth is going on, record label people? We want it now.
New music from Katy B is always welcome. New music from Disclosure is always welcome. So to get both on the same day is quite a treat.
Katy's track is a gently-strummed acoustic ballad with a mournful, hushed vocal about the polar ice caps. Oh, alright then - it's a banging dance track about falling in love in a club. "I like you a little bit... More than I should," she demurs as synths spiral around her like jetstreams.
Disclosure, meanwhile, have uploaded a brand new, throbbing late-night dub to Soundcloud. Called Apollo, it's largely instrumental and sounds like it'll go down a storm on their DJ sets.
Hopefully, the appearance of the new track means Disclosure's Mercury-nominated debut album Settle is due for a deluxe edition. I've already had put together a tentative tracklisting in a previous blog post, in case anyone from Island Records needs a head start. You're welcome.
I don't know about you, but if I was driven to a remote stately home where people in demonic masks performed a sinister, strobe-lit pagan dance ritual, I'd make a much quicker exit than Katy B manages in this video - even if I'd remembered to bring Scooby and the rest of the gang with me. (Mind you, my exodus wouldn't be impeded by a pair of 8-inch heels, either, so what do I know?)
5am, taken from Katy B's forthcoming second album, is out on 3rd November.
A semi-regular round-up of The Music Of The Internet, which may otherwise have escaped your attention over the last seven days.
1) R Kelly - Genius
"Tonight you're lying with a sex genius," purrs the ever-classy R Kelly from beneath the silken sheets of his circular waterbed. "We're both so freakin' hot, we don't wanna freakin' stop." Damn.
Things to ponder while you listen to this: :: More than 10,000 people have signed a petition to have Ignition (Remix) made the US National Anthem :: R Kelly's new album is called Black Panties.
2) Katy B - 5am
Katy is back where Katy should be: On the dancefloor, where "that beat's so sick, that tune's so ill". Also, the melody has a temperature and the bassline has a hurty elbow.
3) Kanye West - Bound 2 (live on Jools Holland)
The absolute best YouTube comment on this performance came in the form of a response to a cretin who accused Kanye of having "no talent" and "just speaking into a microphone whilst doing silly moves".
"You do it then," spat the reply. "I'm fucking serious... What's so good about speaking into a microphone? All that F1 drivers do is drive in circles. All that footballers do is kick a ball around. All that surgeons do is cut people open and remove stuff... It's not though, is it?"
I think Kanye might have written that himself. Presumably while a BBC employee ironed his carpet.
4) Prides - Out Of The Blue
Angular synth-pop, endorsed by CHVRCHES, with whom they share some DNA. Of course, we all share some DNA with CHVRCHES. We share 50% of our DNA with a banana. That's just science.
5) Katy Perry - Roar (Rock remix)
It's not clear if this is an official reworking or a clever bootleg, but Perry's Roar sounds surprisingly awesome with additional plank spanking. The best Blink 182 song you've never heard.
6) James Arthur - You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You
Helpfully abbreviated to YNTSLY by his record label, this is X Factor winner James Arthur's first "proper single" after last year's number one Impossible. With brittle horn stabs and a dustbins-in-a-hurricane drum track, it's a good effort in a post-Rudimental sort of way.
The only problem is his vocal - he starts off with such an almighty "I'm a proper singer" roar that there's nowhere left to go for the next four minutes. The result is a track that blusters instead of blowing you away.
7) Justin Timberlake - TKO
Bring the beatbox back! Posted late last night, this Timbaland-heavy single is the second release from JT's much-anticipated 20/20 Experience Volume Two.
If you think the scratchy, sinister groove is a little heavier than the singles from Volume One, you'd be right. "The songs that I released in March just reminded me of summertime," he told On Air with Ryan Seacrest. "The songs that are coming out this month felt a little darker so they made me feel like... the fall/winter collection."
And that's all for now... Have a great weekend, and send any tips for next week's roundup to the address at the bottom of the page!
Right then - it's been a hectic week. We put together more than a dozen BBC reports from the Venice Biennale in just 48 hours. You can see the main report here if you like a bit of contemporary art over your luncheon.
In the meantime, tons of great new music ended up on the internet. Here's the best of it.
1) CHVRCHES - Gun
This is utterly, utterly brilliant. The Glaswegian synth trio faltered a little with their last single, Recover, but Gun is as explosive as the title suggests. It starts innocently enough, with a shimmering little riff, but within 30 seconds the band have taken the safety off and unleashed a hail of choruses (I counted three).
"Hide, hide..." threatens Lauren over a rat-a-tat rhythm. "I will be a gun - and it's you I'll come for".
It's a blast. It should go to number one with a bullet. You can't muzzle this band. [that's quite enough of that - tortured metaphor ed]
2) Jagwar Ma - Man I Need
As Popjustice has noted, 2013 is the year of the longsong takeover, which was set in motion by Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Jagwar Ma upped the ante with their last single, The Throw - a seven-minute Screamadelic house epic that won them celebrity fans like Noel Gallagher and The xx.
This follow-up goes even further, nudging 10 minutes on the album version - a psychotropic sound rush only a few seagulls short of The Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows. The video edit is more manageable if you're in a hurry.
3) Katy B - What Love Is Made Of
I have no idea why this upbeat, sexy club track requires a downbeat, sexless video that rips off The Fast And The Furious, but that's what it's got. Weird.
4) Money - Bluebell Fields
Read the reviews of this debut single from Manchester quartet Money and one word keeps cropping up: "Lovely". To put it another way, critics love them but they're hard to pin down. You know when you break an egg into a bowl to make an omlette and a tiny bit of shell falls in, and every time you try to fish it out, the bugger gets pulled back in by a gloopy string of albumen? That's what describing this band is like. Look at the knots This Is Fake DIY ties itself into in their write-up. It's probably best just to let the music speak for itself.
5) Diana Vickers - Cinderella
I have a lot of time for Diana Vickers, a pop singer who's not content to settle for formulaic production-line nonsense. Remember the totally deranged whooping on My Wicked Heart?
Her new single isn't quite so brave (Vicko's playing it safe as she relaunches her career on a new label) and the Cinderella metaphor is particularly awful: "For you, I would lose both of my shoes". But it's a solid effort with a catchy chorus and Diana looks lovely in the video, so who's complaining?
The music industry is a big clockwork machine, its giant cogs rotating slowly on a 20-year cycle. So the current 1990s house revival was only to be expected, with Disclosure, Duke Dumont and Chris Malinchak borrowing their trancey synths and D&B fills from the likes of Livin Joy and Baby D (remember them?). It’s giving me flashbacks to university club nights, making me feel both 20 years younger and really, really old.
Katy B was only five in 1995, but she’s absorbed all the sounds and samples of the era like a little baby sponge of music. Her exuberant new single, What Love Is Made Of, should come with a complementary can of Tango, a fold-out poster of Marky Mark and a collectible Tazo token.
The song premiered on Annie Mac’s Radio One show on Friday, shortly followed by an official link on Katy’s Soundcloud page. I look forward to the Tony DeVit remix.
A semi-regular round-up of songs I didn't have the time or inclination to write about over the last week. It's like a mini Friday mixtape composed of YouTube videos.
1) Bruno Mars - The Little Mermaid medley
Impossible to dislike: Bruno Mars performs Part Of Your World and Under The Sea for Radio One's Live Lounge. He also did one of his own songs. I'm not posting that.
2) Katy B - Danger EP
Mercury nominee and 'Easy Please Me' hitmaker Katy B is readying her second album for 2013 - but she gave fans an early Christmas present today, by posting a free EP on her official website. With a pretty stellar line-up of special guests, it features Jessie Ware, Wiley, Diplo and Iggy Azealia. Stuffed full of sub-bass, soulful vocal licks and 8-bit video game FX, it's already stuck in my head like a meat cleaver.
3) Biffy Clyro - Black Chandelier
This is the first "proper" single from Biffy's forthcoming double album. Due out in early 2013, the 20-track set was originally going to be called The Sand At The Core Of Our Bones / The Land At The End Of Our Toes. Thankfully, someone sobered up long enough to notice this sounded like the dialogue from a particularly bad episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, and had it changed to the much more compact "Opposites".
4) St Lucia - September
80s-obsessed, Pitchfork-approved pop outfit St Lucia are being tipped for big things in 2013, but they need to sort out their self-indulgent intros if they're ever going to get daytime raido play. Their new single, September, takes more than 2 minutes to get to the chorus, and another 80 seconds before it really kicks into gear. But if you have the patience, it's a great song.
5) Emeli Sande - Clown
"Success is impatient. Your audience is waiting." Clown is about Emeli Sande's struggle not to be restyled and remoulded when she was shopping for a record deal. "I was going for all these meetings and people were looking at me like 'What do we do with you'?" she says in the YouTube introduction to the song. "I feel the video reflects that". With her album clocking up its millionth sale this week, Virgin must be pretty glad they allowed her to stand her ground.
Sande is off to "break the States" in the new year, but she won't be forgetting her fans in the UK. Earlier this week, she teased the prospect of a new EP on her Twitter account.
Let's get this out of the way now: PJ Harvey does not feature in this Top 10 (which is actually a top 11, because I miscounted). Let England Shake topped everyone else's polls and is, on an intellectual level, a brilliant treatise on war and history. But I never woke up singing lyrics like "What if I take my problems to the United Nations?".
So these are the albums that embedded earworms in my brain. The ones I cued up on every car journey. The ones I actually listened to...
11) Lady Gaga - Born This Way
On the face of it, Born This Way is a deeply unlovable album. The production is harsh, the artwork is horrible and the tunes simply aren't there. But if you carefully select the highlights (Edge Of Glory's sax solo, Sheiße's pomposity-pricking humour and the title track's towering chorus) it's a hell of a lot of fun.
10) The Pierces - You & I
The cover of The Pierces' fourth album is designed to look like an care-worn old record, with a ghostly imprint of the vinyl visible on the sleeve. The music is a similarly faithful recreation of a bygone era - lush with harmony and classic, timeless melodies. When the polished perfection threatens to become too winsome, the band flash a glimpse of their darker side, as on the possessive growl of Love You More. Tailor-made for radio, this didn't do as well as it deserved.
9) Katy B - On A Mission
Kathleen Brien wrote songs about going to the club, her plans to go to the club, picking up boys at the club and the aftermath of having been to the club. Thankfully, it wasn't as soul-sappingly tedious as that sounds. A night out with Ms B sounds thrilling and magical, everyone clamouring for one more dance before catching the night bus home. One reviewer described On A Mission as "a glowstick Alice in Wonderland" and, frankly, I can't do better than that.
8) Noah And The Whale - Last Night On Earth
A big old FM rock album, directly inspired by Tom Petty, with choruses bigger than mountains. It's almost as if Noah and the Whale were bored of pining after Laura Marling and wanted to have some fun...
7) Beyoncé - 4
"Apparently", Beyoncé is a secret math nerd. Her album was called 4, it featured one song called 1+1 and another, Countdown, which was a tribute to Carol Vorderman's mental arithmetic skills [subs - please check].
Less edgy than her previous albums, 4 is steeped in classic soul - from the Randy Crawford-isms of Love On Top, to the Purple Rain grandstanding of 1+1's guitar solo. It all adds up (ha!) to become Beyoncé's most consistent album to date, even though it was apparently sequenced by a monkey stabbing pins into a dartboard.
6) Foster The People - Torches
You might have noticed that this top 10 is a bit oestrogen-y. Well, this is the antidote: A trio of California dudes who aren't shy of a pop hook. They may have been fêted by the indie kids because of their disturbing lyrics and quirky production techniques (he's singing through a megaphone, LOL) - but Foster The People were as shamelessly mainstream as Russell Grant being fired out of a cannon.
5) Metronomy - The English Riviera
The English Riviera opens with the sound of seagulls and a string quartet and ends with a woozy techno ode to Jill Scott. In between, it references Serge Gainsbourg, Ace Of Bass and end-of-pier Wurlitzers. It sounds bonkers - it is bonkers - but it's also a superbly-crafted record, with more musical twists and turns than a bowl of spaghetti.
4) Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes
She's a cheery sort, Lykke Li, declaring "sadness is my boyfriend" and singing wistfully of being "kicked 'til I drown". You have to hope she's seeking professional help... but would a happy, well-adjusted Lykke Li make music as mesmerising as this? From the depraved sexual pounding of Get Some, to the echo-drenched Sadness Is A Blessing, this is the most exciting album about loneliness and depression ever made.
3) Florence and the Machine - Ceremonials
Listening to Florence and the Machine is a bit like standing in a wind tunnel full of kettles - invigorating but painful. Once you get past the bluster and chaos of this over-produced album, however, you might notice that it's rammed full of tunes. Shake It Out is the best song about a horse since Father Ted, while Spectrum showcases Florence's surprisingly versatile vocal range. If there had been a few extra moments of levity - like the frothy Breaking Down - this would have been a contender for number one.
2) Nicola Roberts - Cinderella's Eyes
"I had to call the fireman, my hair was burning bridges.
I'm shooting bullets from my chest. I'm Superwoman, bitches.
And if my balls of steel have got stuck half-way down your pipe,
I brought some KY, time to open, open, open wide."
Dear all other pop stars, you have been served your notice.
Yes, that's right: It's a team ginger triumph in the top three...
She turned up out of the blue, univited, and conquered the planet. 21 is not cool, it is not original, it is not remotely contemporary - but Adele Laurie Blue Adkins' 11 tales of heartbreak, revenge, and more heartbreak and revenge touched millions. It's inspired by soul, gospel and country, but the album is defined by that voice. Adele has a clarity of tone so pure you suspect that, somewhere in the fiery depths of hell, the devil has a tiny leather box with her soul in it. Good album, though.
I've just spent the weekend back in my hometown of Belfast, watching the MTV Awards take over the city. Very surreal to see kids camped outside The Europa (akathe most frequently bombed hotel in Europe) screaming for Justin Bieber. Who was staying somewhere else.
Deranged Beliebers aside, Belfast treated the awards with the usual mixture of excitement and bemusement. Lady Gaga "looked like a teapot", one young fan told me after queuing up to see her for hours.
Backstage, the MTVs are exceptionally well run... on the red (well, pink) carpet, I was sandwiched in between a Polish TV crew and two Swedish women who claimed to be journalists but only ever asked the stars for a photograph. Everyone was very excited by Jessie J, no-one wanted to interview LMFAO. Fame is a cruel mistress.
Of course, the big draw was Gaga herself. We bumped into her personal flight crew the night before the show, who told us she'd be sporting a more feminine look this weekend. Which was true, if you consider stapling a dustbin lid to your forehead a feminine look. In Gaga's world, I think it possibly does. Here's her performance of Marry The Night.
Backstage, the superstar was one of the few who was gracious enough to actually speak to the press after winning an award. She kept us waiting for an hour, mind you, and then only agreed to answer three pre-scripted questions from a hand-picked journalist from Capital FM. But that's all anyone needed...
Rather brilliantly, she was wearing a chainmail dress that was so tight she was unable to walk - having to either shuffle or be physically lifted up by a bodyguard to get around the press area. She asked us "not to take pictures while I'm stumbling around" so I have a video on my phone instead. I'm not publishing it, though, no matter how much you beg.
For me, though, the best performance of the night came from J-J-J-Jessie J. She was very sweet on the red carpet, too... Fretting over what she was going to say in her tribute to Amy Winehouse and talking up new acts like Lana Del Rey and Wretch 32. She even looked slightly less fembotic than normal in her Dolce & Gabanna pantsuit.
In case you're wondering, the "streaker" was clearly a stunt. Before the show, Hayden Panettiere had told us to expect a surprise during her appearance. Later she professed that it was genuinely unscripted - but I think this quote gives it away a bit: "God bless Europe. You guys can have naked people running around, I don't understand. If this had been the US you would have had the police come in and he'd have been arrested. It would've been a disaster".
Here's a couple of hastily-grabbed iPhone shots from the red carpet. Don't think I lead a glamorous life, though. You're missing the five hours of hanging around in the cold with nothing but a soggy sandwich for company.
Jessie J - "It's a celebration of music"
Gaga - "Don't take photos of me while I'm stumbling"
The Hoff - "I kissed a Gaga and I liked it"
Queen and Lizo Mzimba - "We're the oldest people here by about 1,000 years"
Katy B - "I'm not wearing this outfit to the afterparty as my boobs would fall out"
Bibermeister - "no questions, please"
Me and my award - "I was just honoured to be nominated. I never expected to win. This is for the fans and God."
